I feel bad for Malinin at this point. Getting flack from figure skating fans is expected and deserved. Getting flack from the world because a major news outlet decided to do its best to make the incident go viral is not.
The problem with trying to package a “story” like this for a non-skating audience is that there’s a lot about the specific way homophobia operates in the skating community that the general public isn’t really in a position to understand. As much as Boitano tried to unpack that a little bit, and I don’t think Brennan’s intentions were bad in this case either, an article like this is not a good opportunity for a really nuanced take. So instead it gets packaged as a clickbait story about a teenager who screwed up, packaged for people who aren’t aware of the dynamics involved and mostly won’t care to learn, which I agree is not something Ilia deserves in this situation.